Valkyrie needs an AA option

Hello fellow Valkyriepilots and other players,
Flying Valkyrie is one of the most favorite things to do in planetside 2 (at least in my opinion) but its really hard to fight against other esfs or libs that are trying to dalton you.... Is there any chance that we are getting an option to defend ourselves against threats that are way to agile that its nearly impossible to hit them?

Have passengers with AA weapons?

Played today with a striker heavy, not the easiest thing when your under fire by 3 scythes

The Valkyrie is not and should not be balanced around having passengers... this is a poor excuse to keeping the vehicle subpar by saying, "Oh get four Engineers to repair it!", or, "Have lock-on Heavies shoot everything down!". The Valkyrie does need a lot more love, I'd start by giving the gunner position 360 degree motion, it's far too limiting right now and makes no sense... the weapon is a cylinder shape, why can it only rotate 180 degrees if not by some arbitrary restriction?

As for the option of AA weapons... the Valkyrie should have a new weapon which is a slow firing, high damage, flak cannon. This weapon would have a smaller magazine compared to other flak-based weapons(i.e. Bursters, Skyguard, Ranger) but make up for it in sheer damage per burst.

Oh god, this alone would be a godsend for Valk gunners. It's already hard enough trying to keep on target while your pilot is trying to dodge incoming fire (rockets, bullets, small potted plants etc). The rotation limit just makes everything 2x worse.

Believe me I know, I'm a damn good gunner in this game but the Valkyrie is the worst thing for me to gun for... at least the tail gun on a Galaxy has better range of motion, but this is the primary and sometimes the only weapon system for the Valkyrie, it needs to rotate 360 degrees so that the pilot can stay moving and the gunner can stay on target.

if you're doing it right, the valk is the threat that is nearly impossible to hit.

i hope you are not serious here: you want to attack 3 Scythes with 1 Valky and it should be easy?

The Valky is and should be overpowered when having passengers? Wait... - it already is!

You think the Valkyrie is overpowered? That's a first. If the passenger compartment is full of Engineer's repairing the vehicle, that is four guns not shooting targets, you're essentially just a damage sponge with no tactical value to the game considering every member of it's crew is dedicated to keeping the vehicle alive. No one is dropping out, no one is attacking targets. You could leave this Valkyrie alone entirely, the weapon systems it has are not nearly enough to make it a threat over any other vehicle.

Say now it has four Heavy Assaults in the rumble seats, realistically only two will have a target with lock-on launchers... maybe you kill a couple vehicles like this but ultimately you run out of ammo very quickly and have no repairs, you're shot down fast.

The purpose of the Valkyrie is swift troop deployment, it gets in and gets out immediately... dropping off 4-5 troops onto a single critical target. If you've got people repairing it, they're not doing the right job. If you've got people shooting from it, they're wasting time. The passenger compartment is just a gimmick for the ship to do some unique things, in reality you don't want to be in those seats, you are exposed and useless... this is worse than if you had just picked up an empty seat in a Galaxy.

So I'll reiterate... the Valkyrie is not and should not be balanced around having passengers.

When you have a good Valk pilot, it's amazing.

Also when the Rocklet Rifle for LA comes in, that might change things a bit in the AA department for the Valk.

Nonsense. Valkyrie isn't a threat unless it has a whole load of engies (And even then, you can counter easily by using Tomcats... because Tomcats have splash, and will hit 2-4 of the rumbles per hit, and with two shots you've killed half their crew- stop trying to take a vehicle with 4-6 people in it with a one man ESF or one man vehicle- use the tools that are designed to kill it!) or a whole load of lockon heavies- and even then, it can only fire 1 or 2 of those at a time at you- and shouldn't you be running stealth and/or flares anyway? if a niche playstyle seems OP to you, ask yourself "Am I using the counters the game has for this tactic? Yes? Then the tactic or my playing need adjustment. No? Then it's entirely my fault I'm getting wrecked."

Even with a full engineer load, aim for the rumble seats, and engage in slashing attacks- any aircraft except a Galaxy will be faster than a Valkyrie- and even a full load of engineers can be burst-down with a single pass of Dalton fire, if you're a liberator.

Impressive

Many replies, didnt think so ^^
A weaker hyena with a higher firerate would be a nice addition for a a2a option, its not an overpowered weapon and you need aim to get some hits....
However, if someone's here who is good at gunning a valkyrie and youre playing on miller as tr let me know, i got a fully certed valkyrie as well as all weapons if you want to play.. there are not so many players that are enjoying the valkyrie... a real pity its really funny to ram some esf's from the skies (happenend today, dogfight against a reaver )

what is the "nonsense"?
that an attacking valky (with an experienced pilot) is harder to hit than anything else in the air?
or that a full manned valky is impossible to kill and is a threat for everything flying?

No we didnt attacked them, we got attacked by 3 scythes with a2a lockons, i flew with flares but even then they fired their tomcats (vs version) and killed the valk

These guys are not even experienced Valkyrie players...

The former in particular. The Valkyrie is a slow, large cross-section target. Only if you are trying to hover-duel with him when not optimized for it will he fly circles around you- and again, only if you hover-duel at point blank range will this be an issue. It is a very, very easy target to hit with any weapon system that can hit it.

As far as it being impossible to kill? Also nonsense. An ESF against an engi-spamming Valk is easy- shift your aim for the rumbles, and enjoy the easy kills. Or use Tomcats, which are designed to do more damage against Valkyries/Liberators/Galaxies now, AND do wonderful splash damage against infantry, same for Coyotes- no problem picking off engineers with a few salvoes and all the while you're out-damaging their heals. If you rely on noseguns, you're probably going to struggle- but it's not impossible by any means. As far as if you are being hit by the Valkyrie gunner while this is all going on, I would reccomend you move outside of Wyvern range- which is similar to a ground mounted Basilisk turret, and do not move directly at or away from the Valkyrie- it will likely miss most of it's shots. ALso, the turret has incredibly limited traverse- getting directly behind, above, or below to the rear- and also above and to either side, and the Valkyrie is helpless. Stay above him, and if he rolls to fire at you, he will eventually run out of altitude and crash. Once you've forced them low, finish them off.

I have only seen Valkyries beat solo ESFs very, very rarely- and always where the ESF was flying very, very wrongly. If you are struggling to take them down, I'm reasonably certain you are not an experienced pilot- I say this, because I also am not an experienced ESF pilot. I am a novice to below-average one, and Valkyries are essentially free targets assuming they are escorted.

Given Valkyries are light transports, currently billed as disposable vehicles, you under no circumstances should have survived that anyway. Even if they hadn't had Tomcats (Which are actually buffed to do more damage to Valkyries in a recent update), you should have been quite screwed if you had no assistance.

Two of those 3 scythes were -optimized- to hunt Valkyries. It also makes me wonder if I was in one of them, as your situation sounds very familiar to when I've hunted a Valkyrie in the past. Though needing more than one scythe to kill you was a bit overkill on their part.

Flares are a useful defense against Tomcats/analgues, but they are only useful against a single salvo of Tomcat fire, and are not designed to provide protection from multiple lock-on sources. Stealth would be your best bet, but again, against 3 ESFs, a Valkyrie does not- and indeed, should not, stand a chance in combat.

A Galaxy, however, would have had a better chance in that scenario, especially if it had multiple gunners.

This is not to say the Valkyrie is in a good place right now- but the things that are wrong with the Valkyrie is not that it lacks an AA weapon- it does not need one given it's vehicle role. (We already have the Liberator, which I honestly feel shouldn't have any dedicated AA weaponry at all- and a much nerfed Dalton vs. aircraft- it's a gunship and tankhunter, it should be forced into that role, and A2A should be left to ESFs and Galaxies.) What is wrong with the Valkyrie is a combination of poor survivability (which it still is a bit lacking in, given it's massive pyramidal cross section), and more importantly, is it's lack of mobility. The Valkyrie has no afterburner- and therefore cannot suddenly dodge an attacker's fire, nor can it hope to escape from attackers who do have afterburners- (Liberators even get AB, why the hell doesn't the Valkyire? Which one is supposed to be a fast, lightweight transport again?) I would posit that the AT and AI weapons on the Valkyrie need some love and a modest buff- the Wyvern is actually in a fine place in it's current format- especially the VLG- that thing takes three shots to match what an ESF can do with Hornets in one salvo. That's nonsense.

It's true, most valkys are easy cert pinatas for an ESF. But there are also the other ones. There are valkys out there that leave even the best ESF pilots only one way to survive, and that way is RUNNING AWAY.
I gunned a few times for a dedicated valky pilot. We took out experienced (dalton-)liberator crews with a 2-man valky, because even the best dalton gunners were not able to hit us.
You mentioned a few things (like shooting people from the rumble seats with a dalton) that made me think that you are new to the air game or that you never encountered a good valky crew or...
so, as a very (very, very!) experienced pilot my points do absolutely not sound like "nonsense" to me.
btw: i still have problems killing guys on a valky's rumble seat. can you maybe upload some footage that shows how to do it?
i mean: in my whole career as a pinata hunter i managed to do it only once or twice, and i think that could be the solution for my problems with GOOD valky-crews.

One fun thing to do and I rarely see anymore is load up a VS valk with Lasher heavies and fly around bases and just shoot lashers down at were the enemy is dug in. See a enemy sundie shoot at it, is that a group trying to re-secure a tech plant gun deck shoot at it. If you want to help advance your platoon while bumming around in a valk you can always use a grenade launcher and lob down smoke just co-ordinate so your team mates have IRNV on.